More financial planners are borrowing techniques from psychologists and other specialists in our emotional lives to help clients get in touch with the often messy feelings behind their relationship with money, writes Wealth Adviser at WSJ.com. These financial therapists constitute a small but growing group. Currently, there are some 350 financial planners who have become registered life planners, and nearly 2,500 more are working toward that goal, according to the Kinder Institute of Life Planning. The approach “is becoming a hot topic within the industry,” says St. Louis-based adviser David Oransky. But some advisers are skeptical. “I think it takes years of training before you can market yourself as a therapist,” Florida-based adviser Buz Livingston told The Journal.

MANAGING THE MONEY:

Possible Medicare premium hike looms. Roughly 30% of Medicare beneficiaries will face a steep increase in their premiums next year if the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services doesn’t intervene, according to Wealth Adviser at WSJ.com. Medicare’s trustees projected that those affected–including high-income Medicare recipients–would see premiums rise by 52% for Part B, which covers doctor visits and other types of outpatient care. However, HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said she was looking for ways to reduce the increase.

ETF assets at big securities firms surge. Individual investors’ holdings of exchange-traded funds continue to grow at a faster rate than their mutual-fund investments, with a lot of money flowing into ETFs at the biggest securities firms. ETF assets at retail financial-services firms overall jumped by $265 billion, or 14%, for the year through June, reports Wealth Adviser at WSJ.com, citing data from Lake Success, N.Y.-based firm Broadridge Financial Solutions. That growth outpaced individual-investor holdings of long-term mutual funds at those companies, which grew by $200 billion, or 6%, over the same period. Broadridge executive Frank Polefrone says the growth attributable to the big securities firms is due to a lot of buying of “smart beta” ETFs, which are investments that use alternative indexes to try to outperform traditional capitalization-weighted indexes.

THE BUSINESS:

‘Dissident’ candidate wins Finra seat. Brian Kovack, the president of Kovack Securities Inc., beat Southwest Co. Vice Chairman John Muschalek for Finra’s mid-size firm board seat. Mr. Kovack put himself on the Finra ballot by gathering enough petitions to qualify and waged what he called a “dissident” campaign to shake up the brokerage industry regulator, writes InvestmentNews. Other election winners included Joe Romano, president of Romano Wealth Management, for Finra’s small-firm seat, and Merrill Lynch head John Thiel, who ran unopposed for the large-firm seat.

UBS to increase fund offerings. UBS Group AG’s U.S. wealth management unit plans to roughly triple the number of investments on its select list for advisers and clients, reports MutualFundWire. Jeff Miller, UBS’s head of wealth management advice and platforms, said the brokerage expects to increase its so-called “high-conviction list” of mutual funds, ETFs and separately managed accounts to around 300 from 100 over the next year or so. “Our advisory business is growing rapidly,” Mr. Miller tells MutalFundWire. “There’s an obvious need to bring on new strategies to fill that demand.”

DOL’s fiduciary rule to have minor impact on independent advisers. While many major brokerage executives and advisers have derided the Labor Department’s fiduciary proposal, the independent adviser community doesn’t expect to be significantly impacted if the rule is adopted, writes WealthManagement.com. Citing an AdvisoryWorld survey of 242 independent advisers, nearly two-thirds said they don’t plan to change their documentation process ahead of the rule’s implementation. Also, 68% of advisers said the regulatory framework would have a minimal or no impact at all on their risk-management process.

THE PRACTICE:

Making do with a client’s questionable annuity. A couple that had been sold a variable annuity initially worth $800,000, nearly 85% of their net worth, had a problem. The investment provided a generous income stream through a “guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit” rider, but it didn’t give them flexible access to their funds or the ability to leave an inheritance to their children. To make matters worse, the couple’s financial options were limited due to the annuity representing the bulk of their assets. The couple wanted out of the investment, but Pennsylvania-based adviser Tracy Burke suggested a different approach, he tells Wealth Adviser at WSJ.com. He suggested withdrawing a lump sum of 15% of the annuity, the maximum allowed without a surrender penalty, and using it to open a low-cost investment account to provide liquidity. “The approach had the potential to satisfy each of those financial and estate-planning goals which were currently unrealized,” Mr. Burke says.

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